  First of all, the picture above doesn't have anything to do with this blog per say, but I thought it was way, way too cute to be cut out merely because it didn't go. So, on with the blog! Friendship with a Volatile Person One time Monica said to me, while I bemoaning my inability to hide my emotions ever, ever, ever, "But Amanda Jane, that's what we love about you! Your brutal honesty! " Now, how you can love anything brutal (even the beast from Beauty and the Beast just looked brutal) is beyond me. But if you take out brutal you come to the double edged sword of being friends with me. I am not just honest. I am emotional. I am insistant. I am irritable. I am abrupt. I am high maintenance. And I am, sometimes, volatile. On the other edge of the sword is the fact that I am honest, I am supportive, I am dependable, I am excitable, and I am willing to work at friendship.
It comes to pass this year that I have been friends with my college friends for 8 years. Those who survived can tell you that the volatility comes out when the emotion-o-meter is registering high scores as well, or when I haven't eaten. They know to take me immediately to food when I say I am hungry, not to ignore when I am upset, and to step between me and the person who is irritating me for everyone's sake.
They also know that it takes the slightest of apologies for me to forgive , but the longest of talks for me to "forget". They also know that if I have my head out of the clouds long enough to realize that I've hurt them, that I will apologize for half an hour and probably cry, and that if I don't apologize its because I have my head in the clouds.
Its not for the weak at heart, friendship with me. I think of this because of the resolution of a long standing feud with a friend. Now, after a really long time of not being friends, I have to somehow fix the things I have said in anger and hurt feelings to others who knew him. I somehow have to make the world see that he's not so bad, that I was just hurt. And I shake my head at myself. One friend I talked to today was like "I knew that! " when I told him that I overreacted and the feuding friend wasn't bad at all.
Though I will never be able to be a calm, cool observer, I hope that I have learned that telling the truth is much better than a version of the truth hyped up by hurt feelings and a desire to win empathy. Not that I would take it well if you point this out to me when I am telling my story. :) I canna help who I be, but only hope tis worth it t'ya to be friends with me. 
